


The Flames of Time

by ThatOneMawile



Category: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu | Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Genre: #Arvisdidnothingwrong, AU, Azelle is a smol who should be protected from the world, F/M, also happy ending? in geneology? more likely than you would think, the smolvis, well he did but hes a scared kid come on dont blame him for everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 15:15:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19444066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneMawile/pseuds/ThatOneMawile
Summary: Whether or not a pawn can be considered a ruler he once wondered as a child when his flames had been carefully molded into a puppet to dance at the whims of those in the shadows. His struggle is pitiful at best, not a drop in the water compared to his crimes but as the horse steps pound over the hill, and the air chills he knows that his time is up.A look at Arvis of Valthomer, a villain with good intentions.





	The Flames of Time

**Author's Note:**

> So it's been awhile huh... Sorry? Writers block kicked my ass 6 ways to Sunday and nothing has really dragged me out of it... until Genealogy. How did I get here? Well I started playing Persona 5 at the start of the year, now my second favorite game of all time and I also got back into Fire Emblem Heroes. Decided to start a Xander Mobus Emblem and instead of falling for my Fate husband Kaze again fell in love with Arvis? He's so cool? So I started playing Genealogy. This is an AU coz I 1. Haven't finished Genealogy yet and 2. Couldn't kill him off. So yeah enjoy this pile of words for a character who everyone hates!

Arvis of Valthomer is 7 when his father guides him down the long twisted halls to the royal treasury. The pride and joy of the bloodline, the blazing tome Valflame sits sealed away on a dusty pedestal deep in the treasury. For those without the blood of the flame god Fjalar it lights skin at the touch. But Arvis is no mere commoner, so when Valflame flickers to life in his hand, instead of scorching his bare skin like the flames it controls, wild and untameable it’s raging, fiery with passion and no char reaches his nose. It’s pure heat yet tolerable, a comforting warmth instead of a burning one and not even his tutoring in emotional control can not stop the childish glee spreading onto his face. Bubbling, churning emotions are burnt away in the light of the tome pressed into his hands and he wonders, briefly, if maybe his father truly does care for his heir for he granted him this gift. 

He does not, Arvis, now the Duke of Valthomer realises as he kneels only a week later in front of his father's stone cold body hanging from the rafters, scent of lilac from the petals scattered at his feet failing to mask the must from him. Something dark bubbles in his chest as he heaves, an orphan who knows no love requires something else to fill the cracks and the shadows are all too willing to cooperate. 

When the dark priest’s guiding hand brushes his shoulder in sympathy he pulls away from the flowery tribute turned grave and sets his mind on surviving as a child duke, and what he can do to keep himself and his brother Azelle alive.

\----

It’s very easy to kill with a tome, easier than with a blade or spear. It doesn’t take long for him to realize he can stand high on his throne and with a steady hand and steadier words kill 10 before they even see his face. His hellfire could consume everything, and Arvis wouldn’t have it any other way as he guides his men to war, years after he first held the tome. For his vision, for _ peace _ , Sigurd must die. No more lives should be lost because they were born with the wrong blood, no man should be above another because of the unfortunate passage of fate. 

All his delusions of grandeur do not help as he spies a glimpse of bright blue hair before it’s scorched and is reminded distinctly of the last time he saw Sigurd, baby Seliph babbling in his arms as he tried to reach his father’s braid. Everything he does is for the right cause, but his chest still tightens as he pulls away, letting the last of his mages finish the scorching, smell of ash and char rising from the bodies below.

\---

Lilac hair followed by the smell of springs spruce falls into his life before he turned the wrong way, and Deirdre is as loving now as she was then. Quiet as a ghost and as lovely as a painting she drifts further from him, lost in a wave of unremembered memories that only twin cries from Julia and Julius draw her out of. For brief moments he can see it, the woman he loves with a sparkle in her eye and kind hands before it’s lost again in her lavender eyes. It doesn’t stop him from gently persuading her to bed, laying her on fine silk but her mind is far, far away, and Arvis, now the Emperor of Grannvale cannot but help love her all the same.

\---

When Manfroy tells him that Deirdre is dead, time freezes. Porcelain smashes and suddenly he’s shaking, hot and cold fighting in his blood as the cunning priest explains that Julius killed her, and that Julia is gone. Arvis is suddenly alone in this world, Deirdre and Julia gone and Julius as good as he slumps, and swears to the gods that he was doing the right thing.

Why was he being punished?, he cries, a child pushed too quickly into the world of politics. Why did the gods believed he deserved to be alone?, he weeps, and there is no  lilac waves to comfort him now.

\---

Innocuous as they come, the letter in his hand is brittle and dusty, travelled from end to end of the coast in his desperate plea. There are no portraits left in the palace of the former Duke’s bastard second son but he remembers Azelle’s features all the same after spying the portrait of himself that loomed over his worn desk. What used to be a comfort, a proof that his half-brother deserved to be in the castle just as much as he did is now a curse, as there is only one flame haired brother left in the castle no matter how much he wishes to change it. The seal is far too loose as he rips the letter open, exposing his last hope.

A tear-stained letter is  discarded onto the desk as Arvis of Grannvale pulls away and weeps openly for the second time in his life.

\---

Arvis’s entire life he’s been used, and standing in front of the gates of the capital he was supposed to rule from he takes grim satisfaction in that the dark plans did not consider him standing in the worn mud, the Valflame tome scorching his hand and ready to die as a conqueror. Whether or not a pawn can be considered a ruler he once wondered as a child when his flames had been carefully molded into a puppet to dance at the whims of those in the shadows. His struggle is pitiful at best, not a drop in the water compared to his crimes but as the horse steps pound over the hill, and the air chills he knows that his time is up.

It wouldn’t make sense for him to not go down fighting - and as the winds flip his red hair in an imitation of flames and Valflame sparks in his hand he knows that the child before him, blade glinting dangerously as he swings, is a child no longer because of him. That is the crimes he must pay for, and he does not release the entirety of his might, his  _ grief _ on a man who has every right to kill him. Death is the price he must pay - and pay it he does, blade landing heavily across his thick robe as he stumbles once, twice, the world spinning as darkness edges towards him when his hand catches the frozen mud that will be his grave.

His knees brush the ground as the Emperor of Grannvale kneels at the blade of the Scion of Light, but he doesn’t struggle against the blade he gave many years ago to the man he murdered - It’s his penance that must be payed for this blade to cut deep, so no, he does not struggle. He’s a pawn of an emperor, a cursed spawn of the wrong blood that killed and killed and loved no- ( _ AzelleDeirdreJuliaJulius) -none _ , and this is his price. No flames fall from his hands anymore but the red is still there, staining his skin with the blood of his victims, leaving his dark coat sticky and torched.

But no, he does not pull away for the first time in his life. To see Deirdre and Azelle again he wishes, but deep down he knows they went to a much brighter place than he is destined to go to. A life lived by hellfire, lives taken by his hellfire, there’s only one place he will go.

For Grannvale, he conquered. For Grannvale, he will fall.

\---

~~ It bites, cutting his breath for him, the iced darkness consuming all as it has everything in his life, but trying to pull his words from his golden tongue doesn’t work anymore. He would scream, beg,  _ anything _ but the darkness smothers all his words and it looms. His love cannot cross worlds, not a mortal improper love… history will forever paint him as a villain. Let it happen, he wishes to cry, knowing he did the right thing. ~~

But instead of the blade biting further no longer can he feel the frozen line of steel as a hand replaces it, the darkness that has wrapped it’s claws around the edges of his vision for as long as he remembers tapers off in the light brilliance that the hand offers. His flames are smothered but it doesn’t matter truly, there's nothing to burn away anymore. Just an empty, cold abyss that the light of hope is enough to fill, perhaps and for the first time in his life Arvis doesn’t pull away as the Scion of Light, his  _ nephew,  _ pulls him up out of the darkness he was born into.

**Author's Note:**

> And as usual you can find me on [tumblr](https://not-a-mimic.tumblr.com) if you guys want to say hi! It's a FEH, P5 and XC1 hellhole. I kinda want to write more for Arvis tho... hmmm.
> 
> Also Xander has no right to sound that sexy dear god.


End file.
